Doctor Who - Inferno (DVD)

...of 1970's Season 7 of Doctor Who, the Doctor is still exhiled on 20th Century Earth, employed as a scientific advisor to the special British military organisation UNIT, under Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart. The Doctor, with the help of his assistant Dr. Liz Shaw, has plans to get his impounded Tardis working again by sapping off the power of a drilling works which is currently operating on a revolutionary project under Professor Stahlman for penetrating ...
...a fascist rule and the Doctor finds himself at the mercy of his old friend's sadistic doppelganger, Brigade Leader Lethbridge Stewart who resides over the Inferno project and its slave labourers who work at gunpoint, guiding the project at maddening efficiency to its explosive and globally disastrous climax. It is up to the Doctor to save the day in both worlds, but even he cannot be at two places at once.

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This review contains major spoilers!

In this- the concluding story of 1970's Season 7 of Doctor Who, the Doctor is still exhiled on 20th Century Earth, employed as a scientific advisor to the special British military organisation UNIT, under Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart. The Doctor, with the help of his assistant Dr. Liz Shaw, has plans to get his impounded Tardis working again by sapping off the power of a drilling works which is currently operating on a revolutionary project under Professor Stahlman for penetrating the bowels of the Earth to exploit a new form of gas that will revolutionise the country's power stations. However there are well founded concerns that the project could be a disaster, resulting in the destruction of the plant, and as the episode progresses, a radioactive slime starts to reach the top of the drillhead, causing all who touch it to rapidly metamorphosis into savage primords, and it also becomes apparent that the apocalyptic devastation caused by the drilling could very well be global.

Meanwhile, the Doctor's attempts to get the Tardis working see him venture into space-time territory he has never been to before, as he finds himself trapped on a parallel universe version of Earth where Britain is under a fascist rule and the Doctor finds himself at the mercy of his old friend's sadistic doppelganger, Brigade Leader Lethbridge Stewart who resides over the Inferno project and its slave labourers who work at gunpoint, guiding the project at maddening efficiency to its explosive and globally disastrous climax. It is up to the Doctor to save the day in both worlds, but even he cannot be at two places at once.

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The plots of a lot of Doctor Who stories generally worked to a simple formula with a heavy pulp influence. But there were also episodes that broke the mould and experimented with more challenging ideas and narratives, such as moral duplicity, post modernist self critique of our own ideology, and narrative twists and turns in the screw. Season 7, which also gave us stories like "Spearhead from Space", "The Silurians", "Ambassadors of Death" is considered to be perhaps Doctor Who's most challenging season, and "Inferno" is certainly a worthy conclusion of that Season.

It seems whenever I get into reviewing an Old Series episode I keep using the New Series as a reference point and a basis for comparison, mainly because the New Series has entered the public consciousness far more vividly than the old series ever did. So what this episode gives us is some of the same sense of creeping horror and harrowing images that the New Series has.

First of all we have the Primords which we encounter at dotted points throughout the serial- savage, hairy Neanderthals who only a few moments ago were familiar characters chirping jokes and whistles and exchanging insults in such a human way but have transformed before our eyes. At first the encounters are brief, but they appear and attack again with increasing frequency as the story goes on. People may point to George A. Romero's zombies as inspiration, but these Primords can't even be stopped by bullets, and they don't even need to take a bite of someone, they just have to touch you to cause you to transform into one of them. In many ways they're just like the gas-masked Empty Child from the New Series - relentless and unreasoning and deadly to the touch, representing the fear of physical contact, with the added advantage of being savage and fast. The green slime too adds to the menace since it seems inanimate and so no-one believes it is dangerous and they foolishly touch it, and in doing so guaranteeing their infection, especially the arrogant and irritable Professor Stahlman who unwisely takes the Doctor's warnings as a dare.

But the primords are really only the icing on the cake of the story. Indeed they are simply there to foul up the Doctor's attempts to save the planet which were futile all along anyway. From the moment the first appearing primord, who was once a cheerful soul called Harry Slocum- makes its first kill, the story has moved into far darker and bleaker territory than usual. The violence alone is more shocking and hard-hittingly brutal than usual as the primord attacks the man with a hammer, and even though the camera pulls away, the suggested violence alone is gory enough. And after hearing the news of the unexplained death, the Doctor remarks grimly that "It's a nasty business- a murder without a motive!" and it is not like him to draw such a hopeless conclusion- usually the Doctor is quick to look for a motive for this kind of thing, with the belief that surely as reasoning human beings, everyone has their reasons for committing violence and that people should always try to understand those motives. Instead he writes the killing off as something far too random, senseless and horrifying to even bear thinking about.

The Doctor begins in the common world of stiff upper lip work and bureaucracy which he has never been a fan of, and especially when the head of the drilling operations is an irritable git like Professor Stahlman. The Doctor's primary concern is getting his Tardis to work, but he grows concerned at the computer warnings to cease the drilling immediately, predicting a disaster if the drilling continues, and he is alarmed at Stahlman's relentless refusal to heed the warnings, because the professor is simply determined to complete the drilling and make himself famous. And soon the assertive and antagonistic bickering between the two men goes beyond a simple disagreement in politics to something more violent and volatile. And its enough for the Doctor to turn his back and get to his Tardis and hope it takes him away from this immaturity.

The character of Stahlman on a superficial level is the easily detestable bossy man in a suit -a character type that often obligatorily featured in the series, particularly during the Pertwee era. The kind of authority character that so many of the kids could enjoy seeing their most hated bossy teachers and disapproving step-fathers in. But here he also portrays the ruthlessness of capitalism- the relentlessness and competitive machine, determined to succeed at all costs. When I first saw this episode at 17 years old, I had grown out of the adolescent understanding of politics, the teenage notion of being belligerent and needing to demonise and rebel against the government. My new understanding of politics at 17 made society seem like a safer place- with its layout of democracy, complexity and structure, security and institutions that were beneficial to the common people, and it didn't seem from that view that we could ever really be dragged into hell by any megalomaniacs or fringe mentalities. But this episode understood all that sociology and politics and still presented the possibility that one arrogant man in high power could take the initiative against the rules and that all the ministry that is meant to prevent him from doing so would be too busy with its own bureaucracy, sending and returning chain mail while he does what he likes and blows us all to kingdom come.

I was rather naive back then- so much so that I always found the reflection of politics in episodes of South Park to be a wild comical exaggeration of fringe politics, whereas nowadays I realise just how dead on target a lot of those episodes were in regards to the real political world. In my city they actually have banned Christmas events that celebrate Christianity because of fears of offending other faiths. On a grander topic I remember in the months of 2002 when all the talk of going to war with Iraq surfaced. The war in Iraq would be a year away but I could tell it was going to be inevitable even though there was no proof of the weapons of mass destruction, and a huge amount of the British population were against the advent of war, but the determined belligerence of our leaders made all of that immaterial- they were going to go to war and there was nothing we could do about it- democracy and power to the people didn't mean jack. And I remember wondering about why democracy and common sense hadn't done anything to prevent this and I became worried about the future consequences of the war and then once the war happened I emotionally switched off to it because there was so much to it and there was nothing I could do about it anyway.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that democracy sucks, but at the moment it's the best system we've got going. The Doctor on the other hand has now found that his Tardis has transported him to a parallel universe where fascism is preferred over democracy in Britain- 'Unity is Strength', or so say the propaganda posters here. And this parallel universe is the source of much ominous and stark atmosphere, with brilliant doom-laden music added to the mix subtlely, as the Doctor is wandering in the deserted and alien location- he's still at the drillworks and yet it's not the same place he left. And even when he comes across other people he's immediately in danger as trigger happy soldiers are gunning for him before he has a chance to talk and the action spectacle begins. An action spectacle in which the Doctor's garishly yellow car he calls 'Bessie' has never looked cooler as it drives at top speed, crashing through barriers and dodging bullets whilst the Doctor fights off soldiers and literal back seat drivers in quick succession with his Aikido Karate.

When the Doctor encounters his old friends, Lethbridge Stewart and Liz Shaw, they are both completely different people- no longer a benevolent scientist, Liz Shaw is now a soldier, quick to draw her gun and in full Gestapo uniform (hmm, very kinky), whilst Lethbridge Stewart is a crazed and sadistic tyrant ruler of his own little corner, who sports an eye patch which emphasises the malignant glare of his working eye. In this universe they've both lived completely different lives and become indoctrinated into serving and enforcing this fascist regime. At first it feels like a bit of a novelty episode, but as the four episodes set in this parallel world go on with such longevity and with such strong performances and ultimately no escape in sight, we realise that the familiar and safe that characterised these surroundings and its characters has well and truly been subverted and twisted into a solid and threatening form. The alternative Liz Shaw eventually comes round to the Doctor's side, but the Brigade Leader is vicious and rigidly determined to hold onto his power right till the very end. And it is frighteningly believeable that this cruel man is what the Brigadier we all knew and loved, could have become, particularly at this point in the show where the Brigadier was still a rather edgy and shady character, and had not yet become softened by the years. A few stories before this, he had wiped out the Silurian race against the Doctor's wishes for a peaceful settlement (mind you, were I in the Brigadier's shoes, I might have done the same thing), and therefore his alternative brutish character was very potential indeed- as a man who would obey orders and uphold the system, no matter how ruthless.

One thing that makes this story particularly distinctive amidst other Jon Pertwee stories is that it feels dangerous. It hasn't yet become the safe coziness of the UNIT 'family' with the suave but inept bad guys and a laugh and a joke at the end of each story, which was miles away from the 1960's stories and their heavy drama and uncertain locations and suspect lead protagonist and orphaned companions and even dead companions. This story takes the Doctor into a world where he has no sanctuary and no allies. Usually the Doctor's method and solution in this kind of scenario involves evading capture, then letting himself get caught whereupon he finds himself chatting pleasantly with the leading heavy, whilst discreetly sabotaging the bad guy's operations or building his plot-device gadget to save the day. Here that kind of discression and conversing is quickly abandoned by the Doctor as he panics his way through the situation, blowing his cover and screaming his appeal to the people, or outright attacking the consoles madly with a spanner. There is a wonderful sense of gritty desperation to this story, conveyed well by director Douglas Camfield, who also made desperate heroism and cinematic scope the trademarks of his other directing efforts on the classic stories "The Daleks' Masterplan", "The Invasion" and "The Seeds of Doom". His more sombre Doctor Who stories like "Terror of the Zygons" as well as the 1981 sci-fi thriller miniseries "The Nightmare Man" likewise showed his talent for conveying a shadowy and misty atmosphere and a strong sense of rural horror that could have easily passed for being the "Twin Peaks" of its day. To me "Inferno" represents the perfect blend of action and horror, both with the classic Campfield touch.

I'd say that this episode maintains its roots firmly in the 1960's feel of the Doctor Who episodes. Not only is it the last 7-parter of Doctor Who (which gives it a very strong insomnia feel), but it carries the atmosphere and feel of the 1960's stories. What a lot of Doctor Who fans forget about the early years of Doctor Who, is that back then the show was actually very emotional, dealing with the loneliness of the traveller and mystery and uncertainty in the reality-bending and the warped, and of course the series frequently dealt poignantly with death, all done with very melodramatic conventions. Of course after this story, the series became dispassionate in its content, to the point that nowadays it is quite hard to convince people that the Old Series ever dealt with matters of the heart as well as the New Series frequently does. When I say melodrama, I mean there was not only a lot of screaming and tears and melancholy music, but also a degree of the surrealist and expressive imagery. And in this story there just feels something terribly unnatural and disturbing about doppelgangers and the hopelessness of the world the Doctor is in, about transgressing dimensions and uncharted underbelly regions of time and space, and about transformation and living dead, all aided by really low and dischordant music, that convey an invisible malignant presence of the very elements.

In a lot of episodes, there was often an obligatory off-hand reference by the Doctor to a previous adventure in history he had once experienced, where he witnessed an historic event or socialised with a famous historical figure. But here, when the Doctor refers to witnessing the Krakatoa eruption and describes remembering a vaguely similar phenomenon, it really does convey a sense of ancient evil that has always existed beneath our feet and remained inscrutable. It also works as a moment of conveying the weary age of the world, and that given the global catastrophe that the Earth is now facing, perhaps our world really has had its time. Now to move us into spoiler territory, I will say that the Doctor fails to save the parallel universe world, and the sequence leading up to the apocalypse is the most convincing bit of television the program makers were ever responsible for. It really does make you feel the ground shaking beneath your feet with frightening frequency and force, and it is something inescapeable and persistent throughout the locations, and the feel of perishing humidity is insidiously conveyed by a perpetual harsh yellow hue and murky red toned outdoor filming (a similar atmosphere of humid savagery is conveyed in the story "Carnival of Monsters"). The performances really tie into the panic of the situation and the mortal awareness of these people is heartbreaking, and even the nastiest of characters exhibit their desperate pathos that dares you to turn your back on them in their final moments. Add to that some brief clips of distant people in the ruins of shelters, but unable to escape the thick heat and thunderous tremors, and some radio news reports of the worldwide effects and it really does make the terror of the situation feel global with literally nowhere left to run.

The universe the Doctor has found himself in is a terrifying one and when we finally return to our own universe, we are so horrified by what we saw there that we never want to go back ever again. Because it is such a dark, savage and hopeless place. The same kind of nightmarish atmosphere of hell and chaos is created in the episode "Genesis of the Daleks", and likewise the reason we are so disturbed and terrified by that environment is not because of the primords or the fascist soldiers, but because ultimately it is a universe where even the Doctor can lose, where our world can end in fires and flames and even he cannot save a single one of us. This is arguably the peak of Doctor Who's 'behind the sofa' terrifying power, and even managing to outshine other great chilling stories like "Genesis of the Daleks", "Terror of the Zygons", "Horror of Fang Rock" and the recent "The Empty Child".

In many ways the destruction of the Earth represents a lot about our own mortality as individuals. Just like the death of the Earth, we can delay and hold back death, but ultimately it is inevitable that we will die, and this story really taps into that inevitability, and it is a frightening thought indeed that gives the episode its tremendous staying power. It is no wonder then that when Russell T. Davis did the New Series with an "It's A Wonderful Life" emotional approach in mind, he also used an 'end of the world' story early on to convey that sense of life and mortality, as well as featuring a similar yellow lighting hue to convey an infectious humidity and adrenal rush and naked passions.

In a lot of ways, this episode is also about people's lives- in dealing with the parallel universe concept, it actually is an episode about life choices and people being shaped by their past. It is also about human will against industrial or capitalist mechanisation- "An infinity of universes. Ergo an infinite number of choices. So 'free will' is not an illusion, after all!" Actually the main reason I am reviewing this story, in regard to the New Series, is that this second season of the new Doctor Who recently featured a parallel universe based story, and it was an excellent one.

In terms of the flaws in this serial, there are a few. There are a brief few blue screen effects that stand out, and the thermometer control dial prop in the thermostat room is rather laughably unconvincing (at the very least the BBC could have put a man under the table to hold the bottom end of the handle to, at least make it look hard to push). Whilst a lot of the physical combat scenes are actually very well done, particularly concerning the brutish violence of the savage primords. However there is one sequence in the drill head room where the Doctor is tackling several fascist personel with truncheons, and whilst I don't ordinarily subscribe to the attitude that the bad film making effects in Doctor Who are part of the entertainment factor (since I consider that a very belittling attitude to the series that overlooks some pretty strong material), this is one sequence that does entertain me because it is so hilariously bad and mis-timed.

Another denting issue, is that within the emotional content of the episode is a rather contrived romance between two of the senior members of the drilling team- Greg and Petra, who share some argumentative romantic tension and are both torn loyalties over their leader Stahlman. When I said of the new series that the flirting scenes between Billie Piper and Bruno Langley turned my stomach, the romance here is decidedly worse, and there's a rather obnoxious anti-feminist attitude to it all. Greg, in masculine fashion behaves like he knows what's good for Petra, as though he knows her mind better than she knows her own, and coaxes and manipulates emotional responses from her to get her to show her feelings for him in a very masculine way of being heavy handed and simultaneously emotionally detached and dismissive and really rather unpleasant way- the kind of way of getting an emotional response from a woman by telling her she has no heart, ergo she'll react emotionally just to prove you wrong, which I've often found a very bullying and interrogating way to treat someone- not only that but the story actually revels in his attitude and proves him to be right. Although the series was very anti-authoritarian in ideology, particularly in this story, it would be a few years yet before the show would acknowledge feminist women in a positive light by introducing the character of Sarah Jane Smith. This story actually suggests something of a link between feminism and Nazism- that there's supposedly little difference between the Hitler Youth reporting their parents every time they're overheard criticizing the government, and a professional woman putting every man on report who ever makes the slightest pass at her or calls her by a patronising pet name. Perhaps there is a kernel of truth in that, but the attitude of the story on that front just feels so heavy handed.

There again, most of the really cringy material is relegated to the normal Earth settings, and in the parallel universe story the characters of Petra and Greg really do have a lot more grit, and the heavy handed and verbally aggressive nature of their chemistry feels more realistic and effective at the backdrop of the repressive society they're in, being on a collision course with the end of the world, forcing them to admit their true feelings in their final moments, this eruption of emotions being squeezed out by these opposing pressures really works well. In any case I could hardly downgrade a story like this that much, as this is a story so brilliant it features a final countdown to disaster whilst the Doctor is in a coma. Plus it features dialogue like this.

The Doctor: I must point out something that is of the greatest importance to you, professor Stahlman.

Stahlman: And what's that?

The Doctor: That you, sir are a nitwit!

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The Doctor: But what happened to the Royals?

Brigade Leader: Executed! All of them!

The Doctor: A pity. Quite a charming family!

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The Doctor: Listen to that! It's the sound of the planet screaming out its rage!

 

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